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FNND’s March at Alserkal Avenue

For those of you not based in the UAE, March in Dubai is commonly referred to as a ‘March Madness’. All the galleries have openings, Sharjah Art Foundation hosts the March Meetings or the Sharjah Biennale (depending on the year) and there are 3 fairs: Art Dubai, SIKKA (non-profit) and Design Days Dubai. Below are a couple of FNND’s highlights from the galleries at Al Serkal Avenue and swiftly following, some interesting and surprising works found at Art Dubai.

Top of the list is Isabelle van den Eynde with the playful work from Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.

It’s a relief to experience a completely immersive exhibition in a commercial gallery in Dubai – this is an exhibition that you can keep going back to again and again. Through to every corner of the space is evidence of the extent of the artists’ spirited collaboration. The immediacy and detailed tactility of the works is balanced with a weight of subject matter and the accumulation of experiences and time that led to the creation /collation of the many works.

“The exhibition bridges the divide between the sterile white cube of the gallery environment and the idiosyncrasies of a private domestic space. Centered on spontaneous actions and gestures, this exhibition is the much anticipated response to “I Put it There, You Name It” exhibition held at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde in 2012. […] The exhibition features new collaborative work by the Haerizadeh brothers and Rahmanian, some made in early 2014 on Captiva Island, where the trio were invited as fellows of a multidisciplinary artist residency hosted by The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Rooted in collaboration and improvisation, this exhibition folds together individual works by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, works by other artists selected for their shared sensibility, as well as that of a fifth kind that includes performative works made in conjunction with artists, dancers, actors, and friends that the trio has engaged as collaborative partners in the past five years. Conceiving of an exhibition of this kind in a city of shopping malls, the trio are at once inspired by and critical of consumerist desire. Through a use of satire and a sometimes irreverent wit, they question such normalcies. In preserving an open process of exhibition making, design and concept, there is no separation between art and life.” (Gallery IVDE)

THE EXQUISITE CORPSE SHALL DRINK THE NEW WINE runs from 17 March til 1 May – definitely go and check it out.

A clean, minimal and contemplative exhibition that has a beautiful balance between immaculate detail, tactility and concept. “Burki’s on going practice explores the possibilities of presenting ontologies through a lexicon of icons and symbols harvested from a personal mythology of the present […] The exhibition titled Yield includes a set of new paintings and sculptures that reflect on the notion of utopia. Synthesizing the comical and the archetypal, the works can be viewed as contemplations on the desire for an ideal state. The title functions as a lynchpin for disparate ideas, indicating submission to the transient nature of existence, an acceptance of the inevitability of transformation, as well as predictions of what may lie beyond. The work seeks to evoke a sense of temporality, engaging ideas of transience and permeability, both philosophical and formal, by dissolving various foundational dichotomies — man/environment, culture/nature, and figure/ground.”